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Konoha's public records are written on rock: five faces carved on the mountain and generations of names scored on the memorial stone.
Tsunade isn't entirely pleased to be part of that record; she's lived long enough to know just how much is omitted from the official accounts. She remembers the names that have been replaced by titles, the forbidden jutsus now sealed within scrolls. And she knows that village's true history isn't etched in stone, but on the bodies of its ninja.
A girl gains her ANBU tattoo and loses the last of her innocence. A borrowed eye peers out from under scarred brow. Curses eat away at those the village failed to protect. And generation after generation, bloodline limits are visited upon the children of the Leaf's most elite clans.
Silently, without a trace, Konoha's ninja carry their stories, like all of their other secrets, to their deaths.
But one story threatens to be told, the most secret story, the one inscribed upon the body of a boy. Six lines, like whiskers, mark his face like a brand; a seal spirals the demon bound within him. And his blond hair and blue eyes are a promise to everyone who remembers the Fourth.
One day, Tsunade knows, the full truth will come out.